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Whose Career Would You Kill to Have(and what is stopping you from having it?)by Molly-Ann Leikin

Yesterday, when no one was returning my calls and my lunch date bailed after I paid for valet parking in Beverly Hills, I tore into my secret stash of peanut M & M’s and made a list of everyone, in every field, whose career I’d like to have instead of mine.

l. Mary Oliver – the poet’s poet. Her first collection was published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich when I was an intern there during my New York City Jingle Days.

2.Whoopie Goldberg- the funniest woman in America, if not the world.

3. Lois Capps – the member of Congress from Santa Barbara, CA. Think of the changes me, my chutzpah and galloping Jewish guilt could make in the U.S. House of Representatives.

4. Michelle Kwan – the epitome of grace and strength and miracles in a small blue dress. She often skated to one of my songs, “An American Hymn”, and I’ve always wished we could change places. (This comes from growing up in freezing Canada where little girls were sent out in storms to amuse themselves. )

5. Lady Gaga

The trouble with wanting to be any of the gifted people I listed above is we already have one of each. We don’t need two. What our world could really use is you and your unique contribution. By trying to imitate the success of somebody else, you will miss yourself completely.

Do you well, learn how to get your name in the papers, and maybe someday, you’ll be an even bigger star than Lady Gaga, who, y’never know, could be sitting on the edge of her egg, gobbling peanut M & M’s, shushing the cattle from which she derives her wardrobe, so she can hear your new song.